Ideologies claim total explanatory keys to history or nature

Evidence

For an ideology differs from a simple opinion in that it claims to possess either the key to history, or the solution for all the “riddles of the universe,” or the intimate knowledge of the hidden universal laws which are supposed to rule nature and man. Few ideologies have won enough prominence to survive the hard competitive struggle of persuasion, and only two have come out on top and essentially defeated all others: the ideology which interprets history as an economic struggle of classes, and the other that interprets history as a natural fight of races. — Hannah Arendt, The Origins of Totalitarianism, 432

Categorization

Category: Definitional Content

• DEFINE: Arendt’s working definition of ideology — totalizing claim to the key of history/riddles/universal laws — is a portable conceptual tool for identifying ideology across later readings.
• XREF: The class-struggle vs. race-struggle pairing directly parallels the two ideologies scaffold to be carried into Islamophobia’s own ideological analysis; also anticipates her totalitarianism-equals-ideology-logic.

Related

• An ideology claims the key to history or universal hidden laws (similarity 0.91)
• Ideologies claim total explanation of past, present, and future. (similarity 0.88)
• Ideologies apply the logic of an idea to history as an unfolding process. (similarity 0.85)
• Totalizing ideologies are desperate efforts to escape responsibility (similarity 0.83)
• The concept of ideology was born torn between historical relativism and universal truth. (similarity 0.83)
• Explanatory ideologies that deduce everything from a single premise are a recent historical phenomenon. (similarity 0.82)
• Legends explain concrete facts while ideologies claim universal hidden truths (similarity 0.82)
• Ideologies are crafted as political weapons, not theories (similarity 0.82)
• Totalitarian propaganda wins because ideology becomes lived reality, not opinion. (similarity 0.81)
• Ideology critique has been shadowed by claims to absolute truth since its inception (similarity 0.80)
• Ideological politics destroys the very constituency the ideology claims to serve (similarity 0.79)
• Ideological change happens through class struggle, not through ideas alone (similarity 0.79)
• Ideology converts abstract theories into comprehensive factual lies believed as sacred truths (similarity 0.79)
• Ideological movements claim infallibility and simple clarity to outcompete parties (similarity 0.79)
• Ideology can be reconceived as a terrain of struggle, drawing on Gramsci and Laclau. (similarity 0.79)